GTA Online CEO Special Cargo Guide: Crates and Profit
GTA Online special cargo explained: register as CEO, buy a warehouse, source crates, run sell missions, and see the real profit per hour for CEO crates.
GTA Online special cargo is the original CEO crates business, and it is still one of the easiest grinds to run once you understand the buy-and-sell loop. You register as a CEO, buy one or more warehouses, source crates through buy missions, then ship a full warehouse for a profit. This guide covers every step, the real numbers, and how solo and crew play change the math.
Registering as a CEO
Before you can touch special cargo, you need an Executive Office and a registered Organization. Offices are sold through the Dynasty 8 Executive website on your in-game phone, and the cheapest one is Maze Bank West at $1,000,000. Any office works the same way for special cargo, so location and decor are personal preference.
Once you own an office, open the Interaction Menu, choose SecuroServ, and select Register as a CEO. You can run as a one-man Organization, so you do not need a crew to start. Staying registered as CEO is what unlocks the Special Cargo Network laptop inside your office, where every warehouse and crate mission is managed.
Buying a warehouse
Crates are stored in dedicated special cargo warehouses, bought through the SecuroServ Special Cargo Network. There are three sizes, and capacity is what matters most:
- Small warehouse stores 16 crates
- Medium warehouse stores 42 crates
- Large warehouse stores 111 crates
Prices scale with size and location. Small warehouses run roughly $250,000 to $400,000, medium warehouses sit around $880,000 to $1,017,000, and large warehouses range from about $1,900,000 up past $3,000,000. You can own a maximum of five warehouses at once, which is the key to running back-to-back missions without downtime. For a first purchase, a large warehouse delivers the best value per crate, but a small one is a fine low-cost entry point.
Sourcing crates
You fill a warehouse using buy missions from the special cargo laptop. Each mission lets you source one, two, or three crates at a time, and buying in bulk is far cheaper per crate:
- 1 crate costs $2,000
- 2 crates cost $8,000
- 3 crates cost $18,000
Always source three crates per mission. At $18,000 for three, your buy cost is $6,000 per crate, and that gap is where most of your profit comes from. Sourcing tasks vary: you might steal a van, fly a helicopter, or fight off rival NPCs, then drive the cargo back to your warehouse. There is a short cooldown between buy missions, which is the main reason owning two or more warehouses pays off, you simply switch to the other one while the timer ticks.
Since The Criminal Enterprises update, you can also assign warehouse staff to source cargo passively. Each staff trip costs $7,500 and takes one in-game day (about 48 minutes of real time) to deliver one to three crates. It is slower and less efficient than active sourcing, but it stacks crates while you do other jobs.
Running sell missions
When a warehouse is stocked, you start a sell mission from the laptop. Payout per crate climbs with warehouse size when you sell a full load:
- Full small (16 crates) pays about $15,000 per crate, roughly $240,000 total
- Full medium (42 crates) pays about $17,500 per crate, roughly $735,000 total
- Full large (111 crates) pays about $20,000 per crate, roughly $2,220,000 total
The lesson is simple: never sell a partial warehouse if you can help it. The per-crate rate is highest at full capacity, so filling a large warehouse before selling maximizes both the price and the profit margin. Sell missions can require multiple delivery vehicles for big loads, which is where your delivery time and risk go up.
Solo vs crew scaling
Special cargo can be run completely solo, but crew size changes the sell mission. The bigger your sale, the more delivery vehicles the game assigns. A full large warehouse sale can spawn several vehicles at once, and a lone player has to deliver them one trip at a time within a timer, which is stressful and slow.
With a crew, each member can take a delivery vehicle simultaneously, so a four-player Organization clears a big sale far faster and with much lower risk of timing out. The total payout does not shrink for going solo, but your realistic profit per hour drops because large solo deliveries eat so much time. A practical solo tactic is to sell in a public lobby that is mostly empty to cut down on griefers, or keep individual sell loads small enough to handle in one trip.
The profit per hour reality
The headline numbers look huge, but speed is the real story. A full large warehouse costs about $666,000 to stock (37 three-crate missions at $18,000 each) and sells for $2,220,000, for roughly $1,554,000 profit. The catch is that sourcing 111 crates takes a long time, and active buy missions are where the clock really runs.
In practice, special cargo earns somewhere in the low-to-mid six figures per hour for an organized solo grinder, which is solid but not the fastest business in the game anymore. It shines as a background grind: source a few crates between other activities, let staff stack cargo passively, and bank a fat large-warehouse sale once it fills. If you want to compare it against other earners, browse the broader GTA Online hub for businesses and money methods.
For setup screenshots and warehouse interiors, check the GTA Online screenshots gallery.
